Locating The Self In Growing-up

Maxine Hong Kingston and Gus Lee are two of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese American literature. Their first two books—Kingston's The Woman Warrior and China Men and Lee's China Boy and Honor and Duty—have brought them great success and established their literary status. In the four texts, both writers incorporate considerable autobiographical material to depict their protagonists' experience of growing up Chinese Americans. This thesis is aimed at making a comparative study of Kingston's The Woman Warrior and China Men with Lee's China Boy and Honor and Duty in light of the Bildungsroman theory.This paper consists of four chapters besides introduction and conclusion.Introduction is about the two authors' respective lives and works, with a more detailed statement on the four texts.Chapter One is a general introduction to the Bildungsroman theory by tracing its development and summarizing its common characteristics. The conclusion is drawn from the analysis that the four texts absolutely belong to the genre of Bildungsroman.Chapter Two explores the uniqueness of their Bildungsromane from the perspectives of gender and ethnicity. Even though Kingston's heroine and Lee's hero behave themselves quite oppositely because of their different gender identities, they share similar ethnic experience as Chinese Americans.Chapter Three deals with the universality of their Bildungsromane from the aspects of contents, structure and protagonist. Both Kingston and Lee follows the traditional Bildungsroman's autobiographical form, plot mode of "on the journey" and highlight of the dynamic quality of its protagonist, despite their unlikeness in some specific narration.Chapter Four talks about the two authors' distinct styles of recounting the journeys of their protagonists to maturity, focusing on Kingston's talk-story and Lee's humor.Conclusion points out that their Bildungsromane are the writing of Chinese Americans' locating the self and quest for identity during their Bildung process, possessing great literary charm and social significance.